EPA's immediate target is older electrical generating units (EGUs), most of which have substantially reduced emissions to safe levels but still release more pollutants than modern plants.

However, its broader agenda is to use air pollution and carbon dioxide restrictions to impose President Obama's goals of requiring "zero" emissions, "bankrupting" coal companies, causing electricity rates to "skyrocket" and effecting a "fundamental transformation" of the U.S. energy system and economy — regardless of what Congress may do or the American economy may require.

This raises vital questions that thus far have received scant attention.

How many older plants can be retrofitted to meet the new criteria? How many will simply be shuttered? Can coal, gas and nuclear replacements get the necessary permits, survive legal challenges and protests, and be built in time to replace the lost baseload electricity: potentially 2,290-3,950 megawatts in Illinois alone? Can intermittent wind and solar energy make a meaningful contribution or be built in time?

With several plants already scheduled for retirement by 2014, due to EPA's proposal, the future is murky. Yet, even more fundamental questions remain unasked and unanswered.

Do power plant emissions really pose health risks? Do any relevant, trustworthy studies support EPA's health claims? Can we trust any claims, data or mandatory standards from EPA and groups that are campaigning for the new rules?

Don't Blame Coal

Available evidence raises deep suspicions, especially since EPA is recruiting, guiding and supporting many of the health, environmental and other activist groups that are promoting its anti-power-plant crusade.

A recent Heritage Foundation study discovered that EPA gave at least $3.8 billion in taxpayer money to various nonprofit and advocacy organizations over the past decade, including the American Lung Association and self-styled "environmental justice" groups. The agency's handling of two key pollutants further illustrates how far the agency appears willing to go.

Government, academic and other studies reveal that America's coal-burning power plants account for perhaps 0.5% of mercury in the air we breathe. The rest comes from forest fires, Chinese and Indian power generators, human cremation, and especially volcanoes, subsea vents and geysers. Even eliminating every milligram of EGU mercury will do nothing about the other 99.5%.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, blood mercury levels in U.S. women and children declined steadily during 1999-2008 and are already well below excessively "safe" levels set by EPA. Studies of Seychelles Islands children and analyses by the World Health Organization and U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry confirm that no American children are even remotely at risk from mercury.

EPA ignored these findings and instead based its mercury criteria on a study of Faroe Islands women and children, who eat few fruits and vegetables but do consume large quantities of whale meat and blubber high in mercury and PCBs. The study is irrelevant to U.S. populations.

On "fine particulates" (PM2.5), EPA is playing similar games with the facts and Americans' jobs and energy supplies. PM2.5 data collected by EPA from 724 US sites between 2000 and 2009 show significant improvement and an overall decrease of 25%-40% at these sites. Similar decreases were recently confirmed for remote sites and national parks by NOAA scientists writing in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Shaky Evidence

The key point is this: All the mean measured values for the last 10 years are already below the national standards established by EPA. The current PM2.5 standard is equivalent to having one ounce of super-fine dust spread equally in a volume of air one-half-mile long, one-half-mile wide and one story tall!

America's air is already safe and healthy. The even more stringent emission rules proposed by EPA would not likely add anything to the healthy air conditions that now prevail throughout the USA.

But EPA is nevertheless charging ahead, hosting public hearings, and demanding that power companies retrofit their EGUs or shut them down.

This is disturbing. Coal generates half of the electricity that powers our factories, hospitals, offices, schools, hotels, homes and Internet. In 12 states, coal provides 70%-98% of the electricity. Tampering with that energy undermines jobs and hiring, international competitiveness, economic recovery, family budgets, living standards and human health.

To do so on the basis of flimsy or questionable evidence, manipulated studies and EPA-organized and -funded propaganda, pressure and scare campaigns is unconscionable.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has an agenda. Harry Reid's Senate is unlikely to ask questions or raise objections. That leaves one option. Voters, energy users, House committees, and state governors, legislators and attorneys general need to confront EPA, scrutinize its claims and put the brakes on this power grab. Coal and power companies and consumers need to do more in their own defense.

Otherwise a lot more Americans will soon freeze jobless in the dark.

 Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality. Willie Soon is a natural scientist who has studied mercury and public health issues for eight years. His critique of EPA's rules will be published at http://www.AffordablePowerAlliance.org

See Also

Can we be honest about illegal immigration, a challenge common to almost every advanced Western country that is adjacent to poorer nations? American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless. The former wanted greater ...

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson traveled to Independence, Mo., to sign legislation creating Medicare and Medicaid in the presence of fellow Democrat and former President Harry Truman, who during his presidency led unsuccessful efforts to establish a national health insurance system. The ...

What an economically deranged debate we have going on in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. In one corner is an unapologetic socialist, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who wants to raise individual income tax rates on the rich to 70% or more — apparently because it worked so ...

Ninety-five percent of black voters in 2008 voted for then-Sen. Barack Obama. Surely a "progressive" black president would care about, empathize with and understand black America in a way no other president ever has or could, right? Exit polls from Pew Research show that 63% of all voters — ...

Senate Democrats have declared that they will filibuster Republican appropriation bills passed to implement the congressional budget adopted by the House and the Senate. The Washington Post has labeled the effort "filibuster summer." And President Obama has pledged to veto any appropriation bills ...

About Investor's Business Daily

Investor’s Business Daily provides exclusive stock lists, investing data, stock market research, education and the latest financial and business news to help investors make more money in the stock market. All of IBD’s products and features are based on the CAN SLIM® Investing System developed by IBD’s Founder William J. O’Neil, who identified the seven common characteristics that winning stocks display before making huge price gains. Each letter of CAN SLIM represents one of those traits.

Select market data is provided by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services. Price and Volume data is delayed 20 minutes unless otherwise noted, is believed accurate but is not warranted or guaranteed by Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services and is subject to Interactive Data Corp. Real Time Services terms. All times are Eastern United States. *Reflects real-time index prices.